Early Family/Parent Training Prevents Crime

Early Family/Parent Training programs have been studied and found effective in reducing behavioral problems and delinquency among children.

By Debra Whitcomb, NCPC Staff

If you’re a parent, you may remember your fears and anxieties surrounding the arrival of your first child. Driver education is generally required before people can be trusted to handle a car, but parent education is rarely offered—and never required—before people embark on the most important journey of their lives—raising a child.

In the United States and several other countries, there has been a growing movement to provide home visitation and parent training for first-time parents. The underlying theory is that improved parent-child relationships will help parents and children learn to control impulsive, oppositional, and aggressive behaviors in the children, in turn reducing poor, long-term behavior.

These programs take many forms: Some provide individual training; others offer group sessions. Some visit parents in their homes; others are located in schools or community clinics. Some rely on nurses, teachers, or other professionals to provide services; others use paraprofessionals or volunteers. Some offer day care; others do not. Despite these and other differences in the approaches they take, all these programs provide parent education as a central component.

At the Washington, DC, Crime Prevention Symposium held in May 2008, researchers from the Campbell Collaboration Crime & Justice Group reported preliminary findings of a “mega-study” of 55 evaluations of early family/parent training (EFPT) programs that met certain criteria regarding key program elements and evaluation design. Specifically, eligible programs provided services to families with children up to age five, and parent training or support had to be a major component. Evaluations needed to be randomized, controlled experiments with before and after measures of child behavior problems, including conduct problems, antisocial behavior, and delinquency.

The main finding: EFPT is an effective way to reduce behavior problems, including antisocial behavior and delinquency. Across all 55 studies, the researchers found that children whose parents went through the programs did significantly better than children whose parents did not. Specifically, children whose parents received EFPT demonstrated

• Fewer behavior problems at ages eight-11
• Fewer instances of running away
• Lower rates of juvenile and violent arrests at age 18
• Lower rates of arrests for violent, property, drug, and other crimes up to age 27, and even up to age 40

Although these are preliminary findings of a review in progress, they support the notion that educating parents when their children are young will reap long-term benefits, not only for the children but for society as a whole.

The Campbell Collaboration Crime & Justice Group is an international network of researchers that prepares, updates, and disseminates systematic reviews of high-quality research conducted worldwide on effective methods to reduce crime and improve the quality of justice. These reviews are used to promote evidence-based policies as well as to guide future evaluation research.

For more information about the Campbell Collaboration Crime & Justice Group, visit www.campbellcollaboration.org/CCJG. Questions about the review of Early Family/Parent Training programs should be directed to Professor Alex R. Piquero at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (apiquero@jjay.cuny.edu) or at the University of Maryland (apiquero@crim.umd.edu).